A young woman came in carrying an enormous canvas sack stained with mud and sweat. She lay her burden down and, leaning over, flipped the ignition on the ancient grinding machine, which groaned to life. Without once acknowledging our presence, the woman commenced her work, scooping corn into the grinder.
It was 2015 and I was one of a dozen Yale Divinity School students on a ten day cultural immersion trip in the Central American nation of El Salvador.
There would be no margaritas today. No cocktails with cute paper umbrellas. This was not a tourist excursion.
Our guide (who has subsequently become a good friend) took us to places that no tourist would ever go.
In this shantytown outside of San Salvador, we were visiting with a group of women who had formed a collective that managed, through fortitude and resourcefulness, to purchase an old grinding machine. Farmers and people in the community brought grain and corn to this concrete room to grind it into flour or meal. Some of the resulting ingredients were used to support a local bakery that, over time, funded a project to dig a well and build a water tank. In this way, the woman, who had had to walk long distances to find potable water, now had clean water flowing into their cisterns.
During our time with this collective, one of the students asked the ladies how their Christian faith helped them in their work. A tired but dignified old woman – clearly a leader in the community – answered, and while she spoke she said something that struck me so I wrote it down:
“When Romero was with us, she said, Jesus Christ walked with us, here in El Salvador.”
The old woman was referring to Oscar Romero – the Archbishop who led the Catholic church in El Salvador from 1977 until his death by assassination in the Spring of 1980. Romero’s appointment as Archbishop had been welcomed by the government because he had a reputation for being a conservative… but those bridges were soon burned when Romero began championing the cause of the poor in El Salvador. When he did this, Romero knew that he was angering a political elite that would not hesitate to have him killed.
But he did so anyway.
Why?
In an interview with a Guatemalan reporter two weeks before his assasination, Romero said:
“I have often been threatened with death…If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality.”
When Romero said that his blood would be an offering to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador, Romero was using language that intentionally and unmistakably equated his sacrifice with Jesus on the cross. If Romero could say this about himself, perhaps it was not surprising that the woman in a shantytown who was speaking to us, could say of him that…
When Romero was with us, Jesus Christ walked with us, here in El Salvador.”
She did not say it was like Jesus walked with us. She said that Jesus walked with us.
How do you feel when you hear things like this?
I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel nervous.
Anytime any person claims to be, or is generally accepted to be divine, red flags start waving like crazy.
This is dangerous talk.
Almost always, when a human claims to be divine, that human has some unholy desire for power.
**
The scripture reading that I chose for today is a familiar one – it is, of course, the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The parable is sandwiched, on either side by a conversation that Jesus has with a lawyer. The Lawyer, wanting to test him, asks Jesus: ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ But instead of answering him, Jesus turns the question back on him: ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, The Lawyer replies: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’
Jesus acknowledges that the lawyer answered correctly… and that would have been the end of it, had not the lawyer, “wanting to justify himself, asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’
Isn’t it interesting that the Lawyer asked this question? You would think that the lawyer’s first concern would be about God – How to love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind?
But the Lawyer skips over the part about loving God.
Instead he asks a question about the neighbor.
But again… when he asks about the neighbor, he does not ask how to best love the neighbor. The question he asks is a “who” question.
“Who is my neighbor…”
It is in response to this question: “And who is my neighbor?” that Jesus tells the parable.
You know how this parable goes: A man is attacked on the road, and left to die in the gutter. Two men – a priest and Levite (both men of high standing), stumble upon the unfortunate man but neither come to his aid – both cross the street and continue on their way. A third man – a Samaritan (who comes from an ethnic group generally held in suspicion by the Jewish community) – then comes upon the injured man. The Samaritan does not cross the street. He binds the man’s wounds, puts him on his donkey, and brings him to an inn and tends to him through the night. In the morning the Samaritan arranges with the innkeeper to pay for the injured man’s further needs…
When you come to the conclusion of the parable, Jesus asks the Lawyer:
Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’
It is probably not a coincidence that Jesus is talking to a lawyer, because his parable resembles the way a prosecutor might question a witness. The parable is kind of a set up. It is virtually impossible come to the wrong conclusion. It is glaringly clear that neither the Priest or the Levite, both of whom crossed the road and walked on, could be the injured man’s neighbor. The only person in the story who could be called “neighbor” was the Samaritan… “the one,” the lawyer says in answer “who showed him mercy…”
The Samaritan is the neighbor.
But wait…
Was there anyone else?
Was there anyone else in the story who could be called a neighbor?
**
The photograph on the cover of this morning’s bulletin depicts Mother Teresa.
You know Mother Teresa?
Of course you do.
Today, some 28 years after her death in 1997 – we all know who Mother Teresa was. Her name is a “household name.” Any of us could bring her up in conversation with someone in our kitchen, and they would know who you were talking about.
Mother Teresa met with many presidents: Reagan, Bush, Clinton. She met Queen Elizabeth and knew Princess Diana well. She walked through palaces. She was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. There are pictures of her with these high people and in these high places.
But the picture of her on the front of today’s bulletin does not show her in the company of royalty. She is not hanging out with a billionaire.
These were not her people.
“Never seek the esteem of the worldly” she once advised.
In the picture, Mother Teresa is comforting a dying man in her hospital in Calcutta.
This is what she did almost everyday of her life.
“Prayer is in all things, in all gestures” Mother Teresa once wrote.
You can see the prayer that is present in the gesture that she offers the dying man in that picture.
You can see it.
Can’t you?
When you carefully consider the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and… you pay close attention to how it answers the lawyer’s question, something interesting happens.
The answer to the question “who is my neighbor” is self-evident.
But the “who” is not established by any consideration of “who” the person is, in any cultural, social or religious estimation.
In fact, by making the “good guy” a Samaritan, Jesus has intentionally stripped his parable of any prejudice that a human might use to measure moral uprightness. The Jews of the 1st century were not in the habit of thinking highly of Samaritans.
Though the lawyer asked a “who” question, Jesus’ answer was not a “who answer. It was a “how” answer.
The Samaritan is not the neighbor because of who he is, but because of how he lives.
When the parable is over, and the moral lesson is made clear, Jesus does not say:
“The Samaritan was the neighbor.”
Even though that was the correct answer the Lawyer gave, it is not the ultimate lesson that Jesus gives.
The ultimate answer that Jesus gives is not a “who” answer… it is a “how” answer…
Jesus says: “Go and do likewise.”
When I think of the belief, often articulated in the United Church of Christ, that “God is still speaking” I think of Mother Teresa.
“Prayer changes us and we change things” She says. We can see her praying in the picture.
When I think of “God is still speaking” I think of the Salvadoran woman, from the beginning of today’s sermon, who was carrying the enormous sack of corn.
I think of Oscar Romero, who, far from claiming to be God, offered his blood to God, for the redemption of his people.
I think of the man, bleeding in the gutter.
God continues to speaks to us, everyday, not merely through words, but through the earnest intention of our hearts. Through our prayerful response to the suffering of the world.
Jesus teaches us that our neighbor is not a certain person, but rather, a certain kind of action – a prayerful action. When we become that kind of action – the action of compassion – we become closer to God. We become a neighbor.
So in this sense, maybe there was nother person in the parable one could call a neighbor…
Perhaps the man bleeding in the gutter is also a neighbor.
Maybe he is also a neighbor because, in his suffering, he has brought about the conditions that let us become sacred – he has given our hearts the chance to become full of God’s love.
Amen.